Also, that eagle…probably an atheist.
The word is out: the eagle video is totally fake.
Damn. My newly hatched cunning plan to satisfy the hunger of American atheists by training eagles to capture Canadian babies is foiled by reality.
I’ve had my head in the sand for the last week, so pardon me for arriving late to the recriminations following the violence in Newtown, Connecticut last week. Like everyone, I’m wondering why it happened, and looking for answers: unfortunately, the only people providing answers of absolute certainty are the deranged reactionaries of the far right, who are lining up at the media microphone to babble their rationales. Most seem to involve a neglectful god who is teaching us a lesson.
James Dobson: We elected the wrong presidetn and allow abortion, so: “I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.”
William J. Murray: “Without the authority of God, there are no morals, and none are taught in the public schools today. The ethics that are taught are situational, perhaps the same situational ethics that led to the logic that caused the tragic shootings in Newtown.”
Gary DeMar: “The problem is, our current culture – through the educational system – is telling young people that they are animals, in some cases, less than animals. So genetically we are no different (really) from a worm, a bug, or a dandelion.”
Mike Huckabee: “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”
Bryan Fischer: “I think God would say to us, ‘Hey, I’d be glad to protect your children, but you’ve got to invite me back into your world first. I’m not gonna go where I’m not wanted; I am a gentleman.'”
On the less ardently god-walloping side of the right wing, though, they’re offering secular solutions. Mad, dangerous, unworkable solutions.
Louie Gohmert: “I wish to God she [the principal] had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out … and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids”
Ann Coulter: Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws.”
Megan McArdle: “I’d also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. “
Those are all awful and ridiculous ideas. But the very worst is this anonymous poem making the rounds of facebook. WARNING: dangerous levels of treacle and stupidity! Have a vomit bag handy!
Wait. This is so bad, I better put it below the fold, just to be safe.
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly. What do you think? Is it a pangolin kind of day?
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
I’m almost done with grading! I got 120 students and 2 classes finished up last night. Now I just have a couple of term papers for an independent study class to polish off, and then I’ll be completely through with the Fall 2012 semester. Oh, and another grant meeting this afternoon. Some other surprise will probably rear up sometime, but for now…almost freedom!
So I thought I’d take a look around and see what other people have been up to around here.
Physioproffe is tackling Moby Dick. He’s up to chapter 3, in which the awesome Queequeg is introduced.
Avicenna has just learned that Sex is Awesome.
Miriam has another link roundup. I cannot resist entering an infinite loop.
You really should read Paul Fidalgo’s account of the aftermath of an assault.
Aron-Ra explains his name, as well as how to pronounce it, which somehow leads to discussion of gods.
Taslima collects some American gun ads. It’s shocking how common and how ultimately bizarre they are.
Never ask Ophelia for a glass of water, if you’re a man. Wait, that’s not the right message, is it?
Is Jen easing her way back into the blogging biz? She has a post about how diversity is important to atheism and skepticism.
The Crommunist also points out that race and diversity issues ought to be an important focus for skepticism.
Natalie is trying to find common cause with fellow victims of the patriarchy.
Zinnia argues that gender is more important for children than whether you want to grow up to be a train engine.
Stephanie posts a wierdly entertaining rambling history of Christmas. Oh, yeah. That’s coming up.
The Digital Cuttlefish points out that atheists can be tactful at funerals…it’s too bad theists so rarely are.
I wrote here about the accidental 2009 capture and subsequent euthanasia of Macho B, an aging male jaguar who’d wandered across the U.S. border into southern Arizona.
Last week, in a really rather remarkable bit of investigative journalism, Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic reported that Macho B’s capture may not have been precisely accidental:
Although Game and Fish officials claimed Macho B’s capture was accidental, [Biologist Emil] McCain actually set the snare along a favored trail and baited it with scat from a female jaguar in heat. Then he flew to Europe to visit his girlfriend, leaving Smith and another Game and Fish employee to check the traps.
Macho B was caught on Feb. 18, 2009. Smith promptly shared the news with Ron Thompson, the Game and Fish administrator overseeing carnivores, who fired an e-mail to McCain in Spain, announcing: “Thorry did it!” [Thornton “Thorry” Smith, McCain’s colleague]
As word spread, congratulatory messages contained a hint of conspiracy. McCain received one e-mail from a co-worker who wrote, “And just think, he was an ‘incidental’ take. The hell with politics.”
The answer: “Yes, it was incidental, and you know that. Right? I had nothing to do with this right? And neither did Ron.”
Thompson then issued a warning about indiscreet messages: “Emil, be aware that we cannot use the government email to communicate with you. Sky Island (Alliance) is calling it a conspiracy, and for the first time they are right!”
For those of you not conversant in Endangered Species Act jargon, “take” is defined in that act as “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect [a listed species], or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.” An incidental take is a take that’s not deliberate, but rather a side effect of some other activity.For instance, accidentally capturing a jaguar in a snare you’ve set for pumas.
Which means, if Wagner’s report is accurate, that AZ Game and Fish employees and contractors tried to pass off a deliberate take as an incidental take. In other words, fraudulent violation of Federal environmental law.
Why? Wagner has an idea:
The ability to track a jaguar known as Macho B would make the state agency and its contractors clear favorites to win a multimillion-dollar research grant. It would bring prestige to scientists and administrators involved. And it might provide valuable information about the border travels and habitat of an endangered species.
The last three years have been a festival of conflicting stories and fingerpointing. McCain was convited of violating the Endangered Species Act and given five years probation, during which time he’s not allowed to study big cats in the US. So he’s doing so in the Eastern Hemisphere. Biologist Janay Brun, who had acted as McCain’s assistant, agreed to a plea bargain and is writing a book.
Here’s what that “incidental” take did to an aging cat:
[S]ometime on Feb. 18, 2009, an aged feline known as Macho B stepped on the tripping mechanism with his left front paw. No one witnessed what happened next. Based on injuries and evidence at the scene, however, there is little doubt that the creature’s escape efforts were panicked and prolonged.
One of the jaguar’s legs was cut and severely swollen. A canine tooth was broken off at the root. Claw fragments, hair and fluids were recovered from the tree trunk. A javelina tooth was inexplicably stuck in the jaguar’s tail.
Brun has described the cat’s struggles in an online interview, based on her visit to the site afterward. “Macho B fought,” she said. “I don’t know how long he fought, but he was climbing this tree, clawing the tree, biting the tree, banging himself against (a boulder). He fought and used probably every last ounce of strength he had. … It just absolutely killed him.”
Macho B was tranked, collared, and released, and recaptured two weeks later when his transmitter stopped moving. Despite being gravely ill, with a septic hind leg that was hugely swollen, it took some doing to get him back in custody. He was euthanized for kidney failure shortly after recapture.
Wagner details further dissembling, both before and after Macho B’s death, by both Game and Fish and US Fish and Wildlife Service staff. It’s a difficult read, but Macho B deserves no less.
Oh, yuck. I just looked at the site (haven’t had much time to do that lately), and we’re carrying ads for “Concealed Carry” magazine. A whole magazine, dedicated to people who are obsessed with carrying deadly weapons in public, and whose promoters have put up a general ad buy for any site that has discussions about gun control. Like this one.
Just the fact that such a rag exists and that it has people who buy it says a lot about one of the things wrong with America.
Jeez, I got work to do. I shouldn’t ever look at a site like Pharyngula that works me up into a lathering fury.
It was a hellishly busy semester, and wouldn’t you know that the grading would also be hellish? One more day, I think, and I’ll have all this done. I’m about to stroll down to the coffeeshop and surround myself with papers and red pens again, but I think this should wrap it up. Bear with me a little longer.
In case the trolls are thinking to exploit my absence, the monitors have been doing a good job, and all they need to do is send me an alert and my iPad goes “boing!”, and once I peel my eyes away from the papers I take care of it.
I think we could probably all use a few reminders of good things right about now.
… because I didn’t want to have to use the “Fuckbrained assholes” tag on the last post.
This is how Michelle Malkin started a screed six months ago against public school teachers in Wisconsin:
They really outdid themselves. In Wisconsin and across the nation, public school employee unions spared no kiddie human shields in their battle against GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s budget and pension reforms.
We all use metaphors that turn out in retrospect to have been distasteful.
But this was beyond the pale even before Sandy Hook. Malkin needs to apologize for this, and she needs to do it now.
Victoria Soto, age 27, apparently died yesterday while trying to get her students into a safer spot in their classroom at Sandy Hook. She stood between the murderer and her students, and he killed her.
[Updated to add: Andrew Revkin shares more on Soto’s colleagues Kaitlin Roig and Maryrose Kristopik: “Kaitlin Roig locked her students in the bathroom and kept them safe, while Victoria Soto was trying to do the same when she came face-to-face with the gunman and was shot, execution style. Maryrose Kristopik barricaded her music students in a closet, while the gun man fought to get in.” Roig and Kristopik survived, thankfully.]
I spent a little time thinking about Soto and her colleagues this morning. I’ve known quite a few grade school teachers over the years. Until 2009, I was married to one. And I realized as I was thinking about Soto that there’s not a single one of those grade school teachers I’ve known, my ex- emphatically included, who I could imagine doing anything but jumping between the gunman and his or her students.
I know that’s an argument from incredulity. I know teachers are human beings, and human beings freeze up when they’re frightened. But I’ve also seen the sacrifices grade school teachers make on days the media don’t notice. Over and over, day in and day out, with no hope of any relief outside of leaving the job.
And for this they get to be one of the most denigrated groups of professionals in the United States, targeted every single goddamn year for one “reform” after another, vouchers from the fundies and charter schools from the liberals, forced by law to take every spark of individuality and interest out of their curricula and then blamed when their students lose interest, resented their pensions and their health care by people who then blame them when their kids turn out to be apathetic.
Once the media horror dies down about Soto and her co-workers’ sacrifices, I guarantee you this: public school grade school teachers will go right back to being the despised class. “Union thugs.” “With three-month vacations.” “Teaching kids their ABCs.” All the idiotic, ill-informed, right wing anti-intellectual myths will rev up again as if nothing had happened. And in the meantime the people the Fox pundits despise will go on teaching kids to read and do math and treat each other with respect.
In other words, it’s not really that much of a jump to imagine all the teachers I know instinctively taking a bullet to protect their kids. To a first approximation, every single one of them does the same thing every waking moment, giving up their lives by increment to give their students a chance at a better life.
I don’t at all mean to trivialize the sacrifice Soto and her colleagues made by comparing it to, say, having to buy pencils on your own dime because the Republicans cut your district’s budget even further. What I’m saying is that given the kind of peson who chooses to remain in the profession despite all the sacrifice and opprobrium because they want to help kids, Soto’s tragic sacrifice isn’t in the least surprising. It’s what teachers do.
So I just thought I’d take a moment to thank those of you reading this who are, or who have been, grade school teachers for your routine heroism. We don’t recognize it enough.
